"Haa...."
"Hieta, are you okay?"
"Does I look okay to you...?"
I gave Itsuka-kun a weak answer.
Right now, dark circles had settled heavily under my eyes, and the whites of my eyes were a little bloodshot.
The reason was, of course, Natsumi’s pranks.
Whenever she let her guard down, she kept messing with me using Haniel, so there was no way I could sleep soundly.
Because of that, spending the night in short naps had become part of my daily routine, and sometimes I couldn’t sleep at all and had to stay on guard against her pranks.
"This is seriously fucked up."
"Hieta, you’ve really had it rough...."
"Ah, Rinne, you’re here."
Rinne appeared with a tired look on her face, holding Rio in her arms.
Rinne had been helping me clean up after Natsumi’s pranks, so even her silky hair had gone a little rough, and dark circles had formed under her eyes too.
"Mama, are you okay...?"
"Yes. Rio, Mama is fine."
Just how bad did it have to be for Rio to worry about Rinne while being held in her arms?
That was how exhausted Rinne and I had been, day after day, thanks to Natsumi.
If I ever caught Natsumi for real, I was going to leave her half dead.
Ah, what kind of disgusting food should I feed her?
"Heh heh heh."
"Mama, Uncle is smiling all creepy...."
"Rio. Don’t look at things like that."
I could feed her a mint chocolate parfait, or maybe some thick, mushy jiko porridge, or else dumplings stuffed with stinky tofu?
Just thinking about those revolting recipes filled my head, and I could picture Natsumi eating them too.
What a beautiful sight that would be.
People always say life is full of twists of fate, but this time I was going to show her karma.
If she was going to make people suffer this much, then she’d better be ready to suffer too.
Honestly, everyone probably thought the same.
Not just Rinne and me, but everyone who’d been hit by her pranks had to be suffering mentally too.
Pssshh-!
"Ah! Hieta’s gone!"
"Holy man, no!"
"Ah, his mental strength...."
Maybe because I’d been staying up the most lately, my mental strength had bottomed out and I died once.
The others watching were stunned, and Rio, apparently seeing this for the first time, started to tear up.
"U-Uncle...! No! Don’t die!"
"R-Rio? Uncle is fine—"
"Waaah!"
Rinne tried to calm Rio down, but in the end Rio burst into tears.
For a child that young, watching a person turn into ashes and disappear could definitely be a shocking sight.
If I’d seen someone crumble into dust right in front of me when I was little, I would’ve cried too.
Sssshhh-!
"Oh, it’s gathering."
Just like the calm words of Mayuri, the ashes began to gather little by little.
Even the ashes that had turned to dust while lying on the sofa and sunk deep into it rose up and took shape as one figure.
It became me, Higakieta Hai.
"Rio, Uncle is okay."
"Uncle...? You didn’t die?"
"Uh.... Uncle doesn’t die."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Really-really?"
"Really-really."
"Yay!"
Once I told Rio I was alive, she finally stopped crying and smiled brightly, and I felt my heart heal a little.
How could a kid be this cute?
In my eyes, Rio had healing power on par with Est.
"Ahhh, I’m healed...."
"Hai. That sounds a little perverted."
"Isn’t that a bit too harsh!?"
As I sat there wearing an uncle smile, those cruel words from the side nearly made me cry.
Was I really that much of a pervert...?
My heart took a wound from Kaguya’s words, and while I was sagging a little, Yoshino came up to me.
"H-Hai.... It’s okay. I, I like you even like that, Hai...."
"...Yoshino. Please don’t comfort people by hitting them."
"Eh, wha...?"
Yoshino had probably meant it as comfort, but to my regret, that hurt even more.
Either way, it meant she thought I was a pervert.
Already tired enough as it was, now I was hurt too, and I felt miserable.
"Uh, what should we do...?"
"Hai in that state is easy to fix."
"Question. What is it?"
"This."
Mayuri seemed to be saying something to the others, but I was too tired to care about any of that.
Just as the thought of maybe falling asleep like this began to creep up on me, a girl’s voice came through the intercom.
[Hai. Wake up.]
"Ah, ahhh. Maria?"
Thanks to Maria’s voice, I managed to avoid dozing off for a second there.
"Whew, that was close."
I shook my head hard to chase off the sleep and took an Estus from my inventory.
Estus’s main purpose was healing, but since its healing principle was to restore the mind of the Undead, drinking it when I was tired also helped a bit.
Of course, that only applied to me and the Fire Keeper. It didn’t really do much for anyone else.
[What a strange result. How does it restore the mind and the body’s damage at the same time?]
This time Marina’s voice came through the intercom.
Since they were currently in [Fraxinus]’s server room, they could talk to me directly through my intercom like this.
"Yeah, exactly."
[If you say that, then who’s supposed to know!?]
"I don’t know the details either."
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the knowledge to answer Marina’s question.
I didn’t actually know Dark Souls that well, either.
Besides, FromSoft never laid everything out in detail, so players had to piece the story together themselves by reading item descriptions and the like.
That was why I was curious too—how Estus restored the body’s damage back to normal.
Maybe it worked that way because it had become reality and could even fix physical damage now.
But that was just my guess, too.
"One of these is enough to get Hai back on his feet."
"Ohhh. Is that the USB your friend left behind last time?"
"What was it again? Su, sugo...?"
"You crazy bastard!?"
That crazy Gyeongsik left a [Scholar] behind?
The moment I heard Mayuri say that, I immediately snatched the USB from her hand and broke it.
"Oh! Hai, you’ve come to your senses!"
"...So this really works?"
"Hoo.... Don’t ever bring that up in front of me again."
Of all things, I couldn’t stand [Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin].
[Ah, Hai. Be careful.]
"What?"
Just as I was thinking about how to deal with Gyeongsik for leaving that [Scholar] behind, Marina’s warning reached me.
Had Natsumi shown up again?
When I got up at Marina’s warning, the front door opened and a woman walked in.
"Eek! Such cute little ones!"
"M-Miku!?"
"Everybody, run!"
I had no idea why she was here, or how she’d gotten through a locked door.
Miku’s appearance was full of questions, but right now I had to focus on something else.
"Everyone! Let’s be friends!"
"Get lost!"
Miku went wild the moment she saw the younger people, especially the girls among them.
Her pupils had lost their light, her face was flushed red, and her breathing was uneven and ragged.
In other words, she was excited.
She’d always shown the face of a crazy psycho lesbian, but the way she looked now was even worse than when Rio had shown up.
You too, huh? You were one of those lust-crazed weirdos like Rinne!?
"Miku! Calm down!"
"Haaah.... Haaah...."
"Damn it! She’s already lost it!"
When she’d seen Rio before, there had only been Rio, so she’d still had a shred of reason left. But this time there were a bunch of them, and Miku lost it completely.
Thanks to that, the only person who could stop her now was me, with my arm hooked under Miku’s armpit to pin her down.
"C-come here. Let’s be friends....!"
"Snap out of it!"
Miku kept struggling in my grip, trying to break free.
At this point, there was only one thing I could do.
"Physical therapy!"
I chopped the back of Miku’s neck hard with my hand and knocked her out.
Miku pitched forward, and the people who’d been standing back slowly gathered again.
"Haa.... Thank goodness. At least Hieta didn’t get younger."
[It’s creepy every time I look at you. Even I got chills from the virtual space.]
"M-Miku. She’ll be okay, right...?"
"Once she got knocked out last time, she came to her senses, so it should be the same now."
Yoshino looked worried, so I told her about what happened with Rio last time.
After hearing me, Yoshino relaxed and said she was glad, and I thought again that she was kind and mature despite how she looked.
Unlike someone else, anyway.
"...What. Why are you looking at me?"
"No, I just thought the commander really looks like the commander."
"...What’s that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds like?"
The commander glared at me, but what were you going to do about it?
There was no way her child-sized body could beat me.
Even if she managed to land a hit, it wouldn’t hurt.
Well, if the commander used her spirit powers, maybe it would hurt, but would she really go that far just to hit me?
"Maybe she would?"
"What?"
"I mean, the commander seems like the type who’d use spirit power in this state just to hit me."
"What kind of person do you think I am!?"
"Someone who thinks violence solves everything?"
"Hey!"
Ahhh, teasing the commander was clearing my mental fatigue right up.
Yeah, this is the good stuff.
I was having fun mocking the commander when, all of a sudden, light flashed.
"Ah, shit."
The rainbow-colored light was the light that came from Haniel whenever Natsumi used her ability.
In other words, Natsumi had shown up again and used her power on us.
When the light faded and my vision returned, what I saw were people wearing bunny girl outfits with animal-ear headbands and tails.
Even Miku and Rinne had been hit without even getting younger, and all of them were locked in cages.
Above the cages were the words My Own Zoo, and my outfit was the kind that made me look like a zookeeper.
"That crazy spirit...!"
"Wow! Everyone’s wearing such weird clothes!"
"Eek!"
Rio seemed to think it was all fun and games as she laughed, while the others screamed and covered themselves.
The worst off was Itsuka-kun, who had turned into Shiori.
[Hai! Thanks to what just happened, we’ve located Natsumi’s position!]
A headache hit me from the situation, and I felt like I might black out, but the good news I heard next snapped me back to my senses.
"Where is she?"
The cold voice that came out of my mouth.
Without meaning to, my voice had gone cold from my determination to get revenge on Natsumi.
[It’s a hiking trail in the mountains about 3 km east of the spirit mansion! I pinned the location on the phone map!]
"Thanks, Marina."
I pulled out my longsword and split the cages in half to let everyone out.
Then I told them I’d found Natsumi, and they all wore the same grim expressions as me.
All right, time for Natsumi to get punished.
[But Natsumi is under attack!]
"What?"
My grim expression vanished.
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