Chapter 18
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I’ve left the Hero’s party centered around Ryūgūin.
I want to pick up right where that left off.
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Though there wasn’t really much to pick up from.
I could no longer believe in women, and I had no intention of even trying to believe in them anymore.
In the first place, nearly 50% of the people in this world are women.
The source of my troubles was lurking here, there, and everywhere.
Just thinking about it made me feel like I was going to lose my mind.
Inspector Zenigata in my heart was boldly barking, 「Who stole Yamada’s sanity points?!」 But the truth was, half the world’s population was Lupin, and even Inspector Zenigata in my heart was dropping his handcuffs with a clank to the ground, his face turning Blu-ray levels of blue at the situation.
But I also think that everything was my fault in the end.
It was a mistake in the first place to misunderstand and think, 「Huh? Could this girl be into me?」 And it was a foolish blunder to jump to the conclusion, 「Wait, could these feelings be mutual?」
What’s that? Mm-hmm.
You’re surprised that I honestly admitted I liked them?
Well, of course.
I was originally just your average high school boy with a love experience level of around 40.
I was a pitiable male student with so little tolerance for romance that I’d fall for the cooper when the wind blew, or fall for the overturned water basin.
Just from our fingers touching as a printout was passed to me, my heart would beat in a strange arrhythmia. Just from a girl smiling at me, my pulse and breathing would get so out of control that people would ask, 「Yamada, did you just do a shuttle run or something?」
That’s the kind of guy I was, so even just getting obligatory chocolates that a girl was giving to the whole class would make me narcissistically think, 「Could she be into me? (grin)」 Or when a girl next to me reluctantly showed me her textbook just because we were seatmates, I’d get completely absorbed in delusions of the romantic comedy starring me that was surely about to begin, thinking, 「Could it be that she has feelings for me…?」 rather than focusing on the class material. That’s the level of pitiful guy I was.
For a miserable dude like me with zero tolerance for romance to fall for the girls I’ve been trusting my back to and sharing meals with for so long – there was nothing strange about it at all.
So in order to avoid making the same mistake of misunderstanding and falling for someone again, I had to avoid contact with half the population – in other words, I had to escape from society. My brain had been invaded by such an absurd line of thinking.
Therefore, there was inevitably only one 「path for me to live」 remaining.
The last remaining option.
That was none other than a life of complete seclusion, away from the ways of the world.
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As my excitement and anger subsided, what popped up were negative emotions like fear and lingering attachments.
Once those emotions showed their faces, they brazenly occupied the center of my heart, and no matter how much my reason struggled, it was impossible to budge them.
I ran through the darkness of night, shouting things like, 「This is bad! This is really bad! I’ve done it now! I’ve really done it now!」
I was just a high school kid who had hardly even been in a real fight before. Even though I’ve been constantly fighting monsters ever since being summoned, that was ultimately just against monsters – fighting against humans was a completely different thing.
So the barbaric act of chopping off the head of someone from my own world was putting a considerable strain on my psyche as well.
「This is bad!」
Like a broken video player, the images kept flashing back on endless repeat in my mind – Ryūgūin’s rolling head, Mika trembling, Angie’s stunned expression, Eris’s pale face streaming with tears.
「This is bad! This is really bad! I have to disappear somewhere!
But! But hey!! Where the hell am I supposed to go?!」
What drove me in that moment was a feeling akin to a compulsion that I had to go somewhere far away from here.
Driven by something, not even knowing my destination, without eating or drinking, I kept running like an idiot without any rest at all, forgetting my fatigue and not stopping to sleep. Eventually, I arrived at a certain mountain.
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Hermit Mountain, located at the southernmost tip of the Arcana Kingdom.
Its nickname is 「Hidden Mountain.」
It was such a dangerous place that not even the locals had set foot there for a long time.
Its name originated from the fact that anyone who boldly set foot on that mountain never returned – in other words, they went into hiding.
Of course, I stepped foot on it without knowing a single thing about its danger, let alone its name.
This was an outrageous story that went beyond just underestimating the mountain.
Things like securing a water source, food, dealing with the cold and fatigue – all the various necessities for sustaining life had completely slipped my mind.
I can’t deny that somewhere in my head I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal compared to spending a long time conquering the dungeon said to be the most challenging, or compared to the harsh environments like extreme temperatures inside the dungeon and the traps that would whoosh in to attack.
As expected, or rather, naturally, that was a huge mistake.
When all was said and done, unlike the dungeon that I was able to return from with each level I descended, the scale of that mountain was far too grand. And yet, having ventured in too deep, I had lost all sense of direction and location.
It was then that I finally realized – entering was all well and good, but getting out of the mountain was going to be quite an ordeal.
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Lines like:「Ah, whatever!」
Or,
「I’ve got a chance!」
Or,
「I take refuge in the Buddha!」
Are almost 100% death flags.
You should never believe anyone spouting lines like that.
Even in modern day Japan, college students who go around saying 「I’ve got a chance!」 usually either have to repeat a year, or they blow their living expenses on gambling like slots or mahjong.
And of course a character who makes a careless remark like 「Ah, whatever!」 is definitely going to fire the mega bazooka launcher. And needless to say, if someone goes around uttering 「I take refuge in the Buddha,」 even things that would normally go well are guaranteed to end in failure.
In other words, you can think of all of these as cries made when pulling some kind of low probability gacha.
So in that vein, I-
Shouted 「Ah, whatever!」 and cooked up a mushroom mottled with yellow and red and tossed it into my mouth.
My body felt burning hot and sweat poured out of me like a waterfall, but that must’ve just been my imagination.
I encouraged myself with a 「I’ve got a chance!」 and dunked my head into a small pool (?) I found and guzzled the water.
My stomach’s been rumbling nonstop ever since I drank it, but I hoped that was just my imagination.
I declared 「I take refuge in the Buddha!」 and then stuffed my mouth full of soft, sweet tree fruits.
What happened to me as a result – that was clearer than seeing fire.
Gripping the tree fruits, I hallucinated the letters 『←to be continued』 along with a BGM I’d heard somewhere before, and lost consciousness.
But in that final, fading shred of consciousness, I thought I saw…a white girl.
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