By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 9 - Chapter 9

Chapter 6 Episode 9: An Understanding

Nikki’s secret lair had its own light source, but it was much dimmer than my magical one, which explained why Nikki was squinting at me from the other side of the base, hugging his knees. He didn’t move from where he was, but he seemed unharmed.

“Looks like you’re okay, thank goodness. Are you hurt?”

“No...”

“Are you sure?”

“Er... I twisted my ankle when I got away, but I can still walk...”

“Okay.” I assumed he “got away” from the goblins by scurrying in here. “Can you show me that ankle? I know a little bit of healing magic. Not only that, but the goblins are taken care of, so we need to get your ankle fixed and get you back home.”

But Nikki pulled back his right foot in response.

“No...”

“Pardon me?”

“I don’t...want to go home,” Nikki muttered, just as I heard Shin asking me something from the entrance of the tunnel that I couldn’t make out.

He doesn’t want to go home...? First things first, I’d better let the team know.

“Whisper. Can everyone hear me? This is Ryoma. It’s too difficult to speak to each other through the tunnel, so I’m sending my voice to you through wind magic.”

“...can... hear you...!”

“Good. I found Nikki. He looks fine, and doesn’t seem to have any major wounds. But there’s a problem...”

I explained his resistance and I could hear more voices from the outside, all blending together so it was difficult to make out anything. Judging by their tone, I assumed they were calling for Nikki to come out... Their efforts seemed to trigger the opposite response of what they wanted.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Nikki cried. “I’m not coming home, no matter what anyone says! Nobody’s gonna believe me even if I talk it out anyway!”

Despite his bravado, Nikki buried his head further into his knees, and he sounded like he was going to cry.

We were in a small, enclosed space, so it would have been beyond easy to detain Nikki. I could just throw him in the Dimension Home and have my slimes hold him until I handed him over to his parents back at the village. But I had a feeling that doing so wasn’t going to deter him from doing this again. Since he made this secret lair all on his own, if he ran away from his fate once, he’d probably just as well do it again.

“Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m going to try and talk to him on my own. Can you give us some time?” I asked.

After a while (and a conversation among the team, I presumed) Shin gave me the green light to talk things over with Nikki. I thanked him and approached the boy.

“They said we have a little bit of time, so let’s try to calm ourselves down first... Did you build this all by yourself, Nikki? It’s really impressive.” While the entrance was a crawl space, the space was large enough for me to just barely stand up without hitting my head.

It looked like he dug out the dirt from between the cluster of roots, and even cut some roots in the way to create this space. He had taken green branches and woven them through the roots to strengthen the structure and prevent dirt from flooding the lair. It wasn’t a perfect job by any means, but it must have been a major project for someone his age to undertake without magic.

“I used to live somewhere like this. It was deep in a fores—”

“Just shut up already... I don’t need your flattery. That’s not what you’re here to talk about anyway.”

“Right...”

Looks like my attempt at breaking the ice didn’t go over well. Still, I was genuinely impressed by how he built this place...

“I’ll be straight with you, then.”

“What? You’re just going to tell me to go home. You just did.”

“Well, I wanted to hear you out first.”

“Hear me out...? Why? So you can tell me to go home?”

“You were just yelling about how there was no point in talking it out if no one was going to believe you. You want someone to listen to you, right?”

I mentioned this in the hope that he could calm down a little by getting whatever it was off of his chest. His reaction was more intense than I had expected: Nikki, who was barely looking me in the eyes up until now, leapt to his feet and stared at me. Seeing this contrast from before, it made me think that he might be easier to understand than I had presumed.

“Why?”

“Why... I’m just curious, I suppose. I mean, I barely know you. Still, I came all the way out here looking for you... I’d like to hear what you have to say. No stone unturned. I think we’ll both feel better about this whole thing if we can just talk it out.”

“Still... You’ve heard I pull pranks on people all the time, right?”

I had, of course... But the fact that he mentioned it now showed that he was well aware of his infamy. Combining that with his comment that no one would believe him, and how he’d promised not to prank outsiders and followed the rules he was supposed to... Maybe my initial assumption was wrong.

“You didn’t mean to pull a prank on me, did you?”

Nikki hesitated, not knowing how to respond. I took that as an affirmative response.

“In that case, I’m sorry,” I added, “I thought that was your intention. But people told me about you beforehand, so something seemed odd about that to me.”

I was wondering why he broke the rule to not prank outsiders, since he’d always followed that rule before. Thinking back on the exchange, he threw me the octo as he yelled “I got something for ya.”

“Taking what you said at face value, you were just trying to give me that octo. So my guess is, the octo happened to ink me when I caught it, which made it look like you pulled a prank on me. I’m not sure why you gave me that octo, but...am I right so far?” I asked gently after presenting my deduction.

Nikki began to slowly explain. “Today... I saw a whole bunch of slimes on the beach. I thought it was kind of cool how they moved around all weird and stuff.”

He saw them? And he thought they were cool...? Perhaps he would become a fellow man of culture in due time, but I kept that thought to myself and let him speak for the time being.

“So... I was curious. I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t know you... Then I remembered how my mom always gets stuff from people who come to the village for the first time. You bring a gift when you introduce yourself, right?”

“Oh, I see. The octo was meant to be that gift... Why did you choose an octo for me?”

“I thought you’d like it, since it looked like a slime. Your slimes even had tentacles like octo do.”

“Huh... I see,” I said, stifling my laughter. I never would have expected that.

In fact, both slimes and octo were soft and gelatinous, and my slimes did extend parts of their bodies like tentacles. I guess they did kind of look alike.

“That makes sense; thanks for telling me. So you got in trouble because your family thought you pulled a prank on me, right?”

Guilt spread across his face. “I’m sorry for getting ink all over you and running away when it happened... It’s like a habit of when I do pull pranks, and that’s why I threw the octo too... I know I shouldn’t have done those things, so I listened to them yelling at me at first, but then I... I...!” Nikki began to cry as he relived the memory of being scolded.

“There, there... It’s okay. I’m not sure how else to put this, but take your time. I’m listening...” I offered him a glass of water I produced from my item box. I continued listening to him, piecing together some parts of the story that got lost in the sobbing here and there.

Apparently, Nikki had once been blamed for something he didn’t do: ruining treats that an elder had prepared for some of the children. The culprit, another child, had ruined the sweets by accident, but tried to pin it on Nikki (who already had a reputation as a prankster) for fear of being scolded. Nikki was blamed for it at first, but the elders of the village and his parents had defended him, trusting Nikki’s claim. The other child eventually confessed, and the grownups had told Nikki not to be afraid to defend himself when he hadn’t done anything wrong. Moreover, he believed that grown-ups would listen to him if he told the truth.

“But this time, they didn’t?”

“Right. I said I didn’t mean to do it, but they just yelled at me not to make excuses. They wouldn’t listen... I tried over and over again, and I couldn’t stand it... I was running away before I knew it.”

“I see.” So he ran away because he felt unheard. I remember feeling that way when I was a kid sometimes, and I understood where he was coming from.

“That’s all the more reason to go home and talk it out, I think.”

“What’s the point? We’re in this mess because they wouldn’t listen to me. Why would they listen to me now when they didn’t care earlier?”

“It might not have worked out earlier. But why don’t we give it one more try, with a level head? If you’d like, I can help. For example... If they try to smack you without hearing you out, I’ll stop them.”

“You will?”

“I’m an adventurer, after all; I’m pretty tough. I can protect you from any physical harm. Besides, your parents and the other grownups in the village are only upset because they’re worried about you. We’re the only ones who’ve made it here, but there are a lot of people looking for you. We decided to try the woods because we couldn’t find you anywhere around the village. Once you and your family calm down, you can talk it out.”

“You think so?”

It was undeniable that everyone was worried about Nikki. “They wouldn’t try to scold you or look for you unless they cared about you.”

It was natural for those being scolded to dislike the experience; I’d had someone snap back at me once about how “it must be nice, getting to say whatever you damn well please.” I’d countered by saying that scolding someone takes a lot of energy. It could make the relationship awkward or contemptuous. In reality, I believed that there was almost nothing to gain personally from going through the ordeal of scolding. Who would bother doing that to someone they didn’t care about. We had a saying in Japan—be grateful that someone cares enough to scold you.

“Fine... I’ll go home,” Nikki agreed, albeit reluctantly.

I was surprised at how smoothly I was able to convince him when I remembered how he had admitted himself that he was sorry for covering me in ink and running away. Maybe he actually wanted to come home, and just didn’t know how.

“Slime Guy?”

“Oh, right.” In any case, it was great that he was ready to come home. “You said you twisted your ankle, right? Let’s take care of that before we go. Can I have a look?”

I examined his right ankle; it was a little swollen, but there was nothing wrong with the bone. An easy fix with the novice healing spell. After quickly treating the ankle, I reported to the others via wind magic that I had convinced Nikki to come home.

“All right. I want to explain the situation to them, so I’ll be waiting for you out there.”

The tunnel was too narrow for both of us to crawl through at the same time. Trusting that Nikki would follow me on his own, I crawled back out of his secret lair.