Chapter 165: The second event – Collapsing Kingdom – part two

"W-wait! Stop! Someone help me!” The ex-baron that I was tying up exclaimed.

“You’re the only one left, so there is no one to help you.” I told him.

“You done over there?” Hannes said as he entered the room while carrying the other three important NPCs of this kingdom. I truly wonder why they declared independence when they had such weak forces, but it’s none of my business, “Let’s keep moving them. I want to finish getting rid of the small fries and hurry up to the kingdom.” Kingdom? I think he meant Hermagne there? Though I have to wonder…

“Why are you in a hurry?” I asked him. He seemed to be feeling pretty bad once we arrived, but as soon as he recovered from his motion sickness, he immediately went on the offensive. It was quite the change alright.

“Hmph! None of your business!” He replied.

“I see…?” I said. I’m a bit curious about this, but if he doesn’t want to tell me, then let’s give up on it, “Alright, then let’s finish moving those people to the Wallace Kingdom so that we can go to the next country.”

“Does that mean we’ll use…?” Hannes left his question incomplete, but I knew he was talking about Jun.

“But of course! We can ‘play’ more like this, right?” I replied.

“Yeah…” Hannes seemed to already be tired. Did he skip lunch or something? I wonder if it’s alright to keep on ‘playing’ like this… Well, let’s keep going for as long as we can!

******

(Yuu’s PoV)

Me and Maria were silently tying up the people that we finished capturing from a nearby country. We didn’t have any convenient means of carrying them back to the country we were fighting for, so we had to transport them manually.

As Maria finished tying up the hands and feet of the NPC she captured, she tied them to her back so that she could carry them. I also did the same to the one I captured.

We didn’t really look at each other as we did that, but at some point she roughly pulled the rope from my hands, “That was a bit too rough, wasn’t it?” I asked her.

“… This is good enough for Oda.” She replied.

“It’s just us here, so you don’t need to force yourself to use my last name, you know?” I asked her.

“Oda’s last name is enough!” She exclaimed.

The last name is enough for me, but she can be all kind and compassionate to others… She’s being so violent. We were supposed to be good otaku friends, who ridicule each other as a joke, but… Just last name…? This is enough…?

I sighed, then said, “Well, if miss Hagiwara is okay with last names, then I suppose I won’t mind it.”

“O… Oda is an idiot!” She exclaimed.

I felt like crap right now. I started thinking back on how this stupid fight started, it seemed to be so trivial… How did it get to this?

The system had just finished assigning the pairings, and I happened to see that Mai was my pairing, and ended up saying, “Wait, you, Mai? Seriously?”

She then replied with, “What do you mean with ‘seriously’?” She wasn’t angry at that point, she was just a bit surprised by my reaction, I think.

But then I had to say that, “Well, I just think it would be more fun to work together with other people from time to time?”

“What!?” I should have realized she didn’t take it well at this point, but I continued…

“I mean, we’re pretty much always paired together for some reason. Don’t you think that it would be nice if those random systems gave us different partners every once in a while?” I told her. It was true that we had some sort of mysterious luck that got us together almost every time that a random system was deciding pairings. And also… I did think that Maria could end up having more fun if she was paired up with someone else.

“What do you mean!?” She asked.

“It’s just… Don’t you get tired of always being together with the same person?” I asked her back. I really didn’t realize how much I messed up there.

She paused for a second, she seemed to be in disbelief at first, but then she shouted, “Stupid Yuu!”

It wasn’t something that she hadn’t done before, but this time it felt different. It didn’t feel like banter, it felt like she was really angry at me.

I didn’t quite get her reaction, and I didn’t like how she started shouting at me, so I replied by saying, “Why are you suddenly yelling at me!?”

“Isn’t it alright!? You’re so tired of being with the same person each time, so at the very least I have the right to reply in whatever way I want!” She exclaimed.

I didn’t understand why she was so worked up, but I didn’t feel like staying silent once she said that, so I started arguing back, “Huh? You say that, but you’re the one who always avoid me at school because you’re scared of being seen together with the otakus!”

“Yeah, because I don’t wanna be seen with the people that say stuff like ‘I just love seeing girls in swimsuits’ in public!” She replied.

“Stop making things up! I never said anything like that!” I answered.

“But the things you say give off this same disgusting feeling to the people on the surroundings!” She exclaimed.

Things really went downhill from that point on. Neither of us wanted to step back, and we just kept on dragging things further down…

“But you’re also an otaku!” I told her.

“But I’m a sensible one!” She replied.

“And how am I not sensible!?” I asked her.

“Because you hide magical girl doujinshis behind your shelves!” She told me.

“J-just how do you know those things?!” I asked her.

“And you also get all prideful and full of yourself each time miss Ichijouji talks to you! How is that sensible!?” She then told me.

I really did get angry at this last one. I just couldn’t help getting happy when a popular girl talked to a nobody like me, okay? Mai should know enough about my own self-view to understand this much.

And yet, instead of trying to calm things down, I just made it all worse, “Yeah? Because unlike Mai, miss Ichijouji is a beautiful and charming girl that everyone can't help paying attention to!” I told her.

“I’m also charming!” She replied.

“If someone thinks you’re charming, Mai, then that person is a criminal.” I really shouldn’t have said this one.

“Y-y-you're so stupid, Yuu!” She said as she kicked me between the legs…

“Agh… T-that was a bit too much…” I told her.

“Ah… I-it's Yuu’s fault! You’re too stupid!” She said.

I was the one attacked, and it was my fault… I just couldn’t get where she was coming from… And now we can’t even look at each other, nor refer to each other by name… It started from something so trivial, yet neither of us are trying to make amends now.

“What a wonderful event…” Mai grumbled out loud as she carried the NPC on her back.

“Well, if you aren’t enjoying it, then wouldn’t you have been happier if you had been paired up with someone else?” I told her, bringing back what started our fight.

“Oh, but of course it comes back to this! Oda, you really can’t endure playing with a tiny kid like me, do you!?” She said.

“… Weren’t you the one who said it was such a bother to deal with an otaku like me!?” I ended up replying.

We were still quarreling. I didn’t even know if I meant what I said anymore, but I just couldn’t bring myself to reply normally when we were like that… This really felt horrible.

After another small while of silence, Mai ended up saying, “Just try not getting in my way… Oda.”

“That’s my line… Miss Hagiwara.” I replied.

We went silent once more… Eventually we both said, “Stupid” at the same time though.

We were really close to one another, yet we weren’t talking. We weren’t even looking at each other… She always has such gentle smile when talking to others, but she’s always annoyed or complaining when talking to me… I really felt like playing with others could have been more fun… I really felt that it could have been more fun for her at least.

I didn’t really know how to make up with her, we just kept on silently walking, ignoring the NPCs that we were carrying, who were clearly uncomfortable with the situation… Not nearly as uncomfortable as I was though.