“I don’t want to do anything...”
I muttered this to myself after finishing dinner. I had returned to my room and was currently sprawled flat on the floor.
I wasn’t actually doing anything right now, but somehow, I felt the urge to do even less than nothing.
“What’s come over you all of a sudden?”
At Itsuka-kun’s question, he watched me with a puzzled look. I answered him without bothering to get up.
“Itsuka-kun wouldn’t understand... I got so many looks today, like I was some piece of trash...”
To be fair, as of today, I probably was trash.
Otherwise, there was no way people would have stared at me as if they were looking at garbage.
Honestly, I could see why they’d react that way.
When the Fire Keeper introduced me earlier, she basically made it sound like we were already married, and then two women came and pressed themselves against me right in the middle of it. Of course everyone would look at me like that.
“Still, it’s not like I did it because I wanted to...”
“Mm... Hieta, I understand. That’s just everyday life for me.”
“A-ah...”
Seeing Itsuka-kun stare blankly into space as he spoke, I felt a sudden wave of pity for him.
Come to think of it, because Tohka and Origami were always clinging to him, his reputation at school had already gone straight to hell.
In a way, he’d probably been receiving twice as many of those looks as I had today.
In other words, he was my senior.
“So you were a senior after all.”
“Don’t call me a senior! I’m the one who brought it up, but I really don’t want to hear that!”
Itsuka-kun launched into a passionate denial, insisting he wasn't anyone's senior, but I could tell.
He was definitely happy to have found someone in the same boat.
“Hello, senior. I’m Hieta, No. 2 of the abyss.”
“I said don’t call me a senior!!!”
“Come on, how could I not? Senior Itsuka Shido, No. 1 of the abyss.”
“I’m not a senior!!!”
“Then I’ll call you master instead.”
“No!!!!”
Itsuka-kun let out a scream and dropped to his knees under my relentless teasing.
At the sight, I burst out laughing.
“Pfft! Ahahaha! Sorry, I just wanted to tease you a little. Thanks, I feel better now.”
“...Yeah. If you had fun, then fine. Whatever.”
Itsuka-kun muttered in a thoroughly exhausted voice.
Then, returning to his usual self, he asked, “Oh, right. They said the inn we’re staying at has a hot spring. Want to go?”
“A hot spring... A hot spring, huh...”
I pondered it for a second.
I did need to wash up, but I wasn’t sure if there was any reason to go all the way to a hot spring just for that.
Still, we’d come all this way, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.
“Then let’s go.”
“Yeah. I should go too.”
So Itsuka-kun and I grabbed our toiletries and left the room, heading for the baths.
“Come to think of it, how did you bathe in the world you lived in, Hieta?”
“The world I lived in?”
He asked this as we walked down the hallway. The world I lived in meant Dark Souls; that was the only world I’d ever mentioned.
Taken off guard by the sudden question, I fell into thought.
Did I... ever bathe?
No matter how hard I tried to dig through my memories, I couldn’t recall ever taking a bath.
The blood that splashed on me after slaying enemies simply disappeared whenever I rested at a bonfire. From the start, I’d never had the luxury of properly washing my body.
“Hmm. I don’t think I ever did. I just never had the time for it.”
“Well, yeah. From what I heard before, it does sound like you wouldn’t have had the time.”
Itsuka-kun nodded, accepting my answer.
Then, as if something had just occurred to him, he tilted his head and asked again, “But didn’t you say you went with your parents when you were little?”
He still remembered what I’d said last time, back when Yoshino had frozen the pipes and we went to a nearby bathhouse.
I was briefly impressed by Itsuka-kun’s memory, then started thinking about how to answer.
Honestly, even if my transfer from Dark Souls to this world was a one-in-a-million occurrence, the idea of a person being possessed by a game character was ridiculous.
But haven’t a lot of ridiculous things already happened?
Come to think of it, my life had been a series of absurdities.
First I fell into Dark Souls, then I came to this world, then I got tangled up with spirits, saved Rinne, and somehow the Fire Keeper ended up coming to this world too.
If I wrote a novel like that, people would trash it for being completely absurd. (The only absurd thing here is your attitude, you little punk.)
“That’s—kh!”
The moment I tried to explain my past to Itsuka-kun, I felt a hard impact in my stomach.
The source of the impact was a woman running through the hallway—a photographer from the travel agency that had organized the school trip.
“S-sorry!”
Realizing she had been running and bumped into me, she bowed her head and apologized.
“It’s fine. You aren’t hurt, are you?”
“Huh? I’m the one who got hit, though...”
When I asked if she was all right, the photographer looked confused.
At her reaction, I smiled and said, “If a beautiful woman got hurt because she bumped into me, I’d feel pretty uncomfortable.”
To be honest, it was just a polite thing to say.
Still, even if she had been the one running, I was also at fault for not looking ahead and walking while glancing to the side, so I said it partly for that reason too.
Hearing my words, the photographer’s face turned a light shade of red.
Itsuka-kun, for some reason, was looking at me like I was trash.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Seriously... I can only say you’re amazing.”
“Huh?”
“No. Just live your life in blissful ignorance.”
Shaking his head, Itsuka-kun spoke, and I still couldn’t understand why he was reacting like that.
Did I do something wrong just now? I honestly had no idea.
While I was wondering, women’s voices echoed from down the hallway.
“Mister Ellen~”
“Where are you~? Please take our picture too~!”
“Eek!”
Ai, Mai, and Mii. Hearing them, the photographer turned pale with fear and quickly hid behind me.
“W-what are you doing all of a sudden?!”
“Please help me just this once!”
As soon as the photographer finished speaking, Ai, Mai, and Mii appeared around the corner ahead.
“Ah! Itsuka-kun! Hieta-kun! Have you seen a blonde woman around here?”
“She was carrying a camera too!”
For a moment, I wondered whether I should tell the truth or hide the photographer.
But seeing how she seemed to be genuinely fleeing for her life, I decided to side with her.
“If you mean that person, I saw her heading that way.”
“Thanks!”
“Let’s hurry and catch up!”
“This is so annoying~!”
The three of them ran off in the direction I pointed. Only after they disappeared from view did the photographer emerge from behind me.
“Phew... Thank you so much. Thanks to you, I managed to avoid getting caught.”
“I’m glad I could help a lovely woman.”
“Ngh...”
Her face reddened slightly at my words. “I’ll repay this kindness someday,” she said, before hurrying away.
“Hieta, I really think you should be careful walking at night.”
“Huh? Where did that come from?”
“Yeah. Seriously, be careful.”
At Itsuka-kun’s words, question marks popped up in my head.
Anyone watching would think I had a messy relationship with the women around me.
“I don’t really have any kind of relationship with women, though.”
“Yeah. So that’s what you think. Yoshino and Sachi are going to have a rough time.”
Hearing Itsuka-kun mutter that, I only became more confused.
“Huh? Why would they have a rough time?”
“Please, at least catch on to this much...! Have you never considered that they might actually like you?”
“Come on, what about me would make them like me? And that thing Yoshinon said before about Yoshino liking me was probably just a joke.”
Honestly, it wasn’t like I’d never thought about it.
Maybe they did like me?
But I’d seen it too often. Countless losers who thought the other person liked them, confessed, and got rejected.
So I could neatly fold up that thought and throw it in the trash.
I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable because of my own misunderstanding, and I didn’t want things to get awkward between us.
If a mistake on my part would ruin the relationship we have, then I thought it was better to just leave things as they are.
“......Sigh. No. Just stay that way, then.”
But judging from Itsuka-kun’s reaction, there was something wrong with what I’d said.
“Was there something wrong with my words just now, too?”
No matter how I thought about it, I didn’t see a problem.
Even when I replayed everything I’d said, nothing seemed an issue.
Complimenting a woman’s looks wasn’t a problem, whether it was meant as politeness or not, and the other things I’d said weren’t problematic either.
So all I could do was feel even more puzzled by Itsuka-kun’s thoroughly defeated expression.
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