Chapter 2
Despair for These Nouveaux Riches!
1
“Bring him back! Bring back my precious Snyder! I developed him myself, you stupid NEET!”
“I got another character up to exactly the same level, so just deal with it. What’s dead is dead! I’m sure Snyder is enjoying himself in some other world right now. He probably took out the Demon King and got to bask in the limelight.”
It was the next day.
We were in the living room, our collective place of relaxation, and as I had expected, Aqua was sobbing about her missing game character. In other words, a normal morning for our household.
“Really…? You really think Snyder is off in another world, having fun?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it. I’ll bet he’s got the beautiful girls, the harem, the whole nine yards. So don’t cry for him.”
Megumin finally got up while I was busy reassuring Aqua. “Good morning, you two. You’re up rather early today, aren’t you?”
“I guess so. Darkness’s kid and I were playing with Emperor Zel earlier. Her nervousness around him was so adorable! I guess she’s never fed a dragon before.”
More likely, she was nervous because she knew a chick like that would drop dead if you made one wrong move with it.
“Ah yes, Sylphina. I haven’t seen her around. Did she go somewhere?”
“She and Darkness went out for the day already. I guess Darkness figures that if Sylphina’s going to be living here, she ought to meet some kids her own age.” It just went to show that Darkness really did care about her cousin; she looked after her like she really was her mom.
That seemed to make Megumin happy, because she smiled. “I see. Well, I hope the child will soon adapt to life in this town.”
Aqua, sprawled on the couch, put in: “Hey, Megumin, I know you get up early all the time, but what’s with Kazuma today?” As usual, this world-class dunce chose the worst possible time to develop an insightful streak. I could hardly tell her I’d jumped out of bed today, looking forward to my very first official date with Megumin. And I definitely couldn’t say that with Megumin herself standing right there. “In fact, you seem to be up a little earlier than usual, too, Megumin…”
Megumin flinched. “Wh-what makes you say that? I am frequently up around this time. Clearly, you and Kazuma are up earlier than usual yourselves, so you only think I am up very early, and besides, it is a beautiful day today, perfect for an explosion, so of course I would be eager to get up and blow up!” She was starting to ramble, and Aqua gave her a blank stare.
…Huh? Could it be that Megumin is actually a little bit excited for our date, too?
That’s right, a date.
My very first date with a girl in my entire life.
Sure, I’d toured Elroad with Darkness that one time, and I took Megumin out to fire off explosions pretty much constantly, but there was no, you know, mood when we did that. None of those counted.
As Megumin and I stole little glances at each other, Aqua, usually the most resolutely oblivious member of the household, smirked. “Ahaaa… I see what’s going on with you two.” Of all the times for her to develop some woman’s intuition!
“A-and what is that, Aqua?”
“Yeah, stop grinning like that. Or I promise you’re gonna be crying two seconds from now!”
Aqua wasn’t deterred by Megumin’s and my threats, though; she put a hand to her mouth and said, “There was leftover frog steak last night, and you both got up early hoping to get your hands on it! Well, too bad for you. The early bird gets the frog steak, and I ate every last bite!”
Okay, so maybe Aqua was just being her usual self.
…Hang on—wait a second.
“Screw you! I was saving that! I got up in the middle of the night to make sandwiches for today! Why do you always have to do the most obnoxious things?!”
“What’s eaten is eaten, so boo-hoo! You don’t have to get so upset. I’ll help you make your dumb sandwiches.”
Aqua must have felt genuinely bad when she heard I’d been up late making those sandwiches, because she actually apologized…
“Hang on. Where were you gonna take those sandwiches? If you two are going to go have fun somewhere, I wanna come!”
………………………………………………
2
“Explooosion!!”
Explosion magic slammed into a lake not far from Axel. Brutal destructive power rent the air over the water, sending shock waves rippling along the surface. Some of the water vaporized, spreading out in a fine mist that shimmered in a rainbow of colors as it caught the light.
“I give today’s explosion ninety-five points! The destructive power is a given, but using the environment like that, producing that spray, gives it an extra layer, and that rainbow was downright beautiful. The only thing it lacked was practicality; otherwise, it could have gained a few more points.”
“Unfortunately, with no monsters around, practicality is rather out of the question. This is my highest score in a while, though. Today promises to be a good day!”
I went over to the very satisfied Megumin and used Drain Touch to transfer the minimum amount of MP she needed to be able to move. That was when I noticed something. “Hold on. That shock wave nailed some fish! Perfect, let’s bring them in and grill them up. We don’t have as many frog-steak sandwiches as I planned on, but a little cookout would be a nice second best. Great work, Megumin!”
“Does that mean…?” She looked at me expectantly as she sat up.
“Today’s explosion gets ninety-eight points!”
“Thank you! Thank you very much! Thank you so much!” Tears formed at the corners of her eyes, and even I could hardly hold back a sniffle as I nodded at her in acknowledgment.
Meanwhile, Aqua was watching us…
“Excuse me, but can I ask you something? Are your conversations always this stupid when I’m not around?”
She was being awfully rude for someone stuffing her face with a fresh, handmade sandwich.
“Pipe down, Aqua—this isn’t stupid. For an explosier (an Explosion sommelier) like me, this is an important and meaningful ritual.”
“He is right, Aqua. These days I find my mood, my health, and everything about a day can be dictated by this score. Explosions are no game!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to know, but there’s one thing I do know. This is a subject I’d better leave alone.” Gee, I guess Aqua had started to pick up some basic learning abilities.
But still…
“Hey, Megumin, does this actually count as a date?” I whispered to her.
“I’m not sure. I don’t really know what a date entails myself… But when you go to a scenic location with the person you like and share lunch together, couldn’t that be considered a date…?”
Hmm, so this was a date. Somehow it didn’t feel that different from what we always did. I guess having Aqua there sort of spoiled the mood. We’d invited her to come along on the assumption that suddenly being alone together would leave us both feeling pretty awkward, but eventually, we were going to have to—!
“Mm, that’s a good sandwich. Once we grill up those fish, how about a midday nap? Boy, talk about picnic weather! Next time, we’ll have to ask Darkness and Sylphina to come along!”
Aqua said all this as she climbed out of the lake with an armful of fish and started gathering branches to make a fire.
…Ahhh, I had it wrong all along.
This wasn’t a date. It was a family picnic.
3
We were back in town after returning from our outing.
Just at the gate to Axel, the guy guarding the town entrance called out to us. “Hey, you’re all adventurers, aren’t you? There was an emergency summons earlier. You should head to the Guild.”
And so we did.
Standing in the middle of town, the Adventurers Guild was the area’s anti-monster nerve center. It was a veritable fortress for the local adventurers, a formidable stronghold that always had our collective backs.
We headed over to the Guild like the guy at the gate said but stopped before we got inside.
“All right, everyone, please line up here. This is an emergency. This is an emergency summons. I’m very sorry for the trouble, but we thank you for your support.”
The receptionist was shuffling the gathered adventurers into a line outside. It looked to me like they had all grabbed their equipment when they’d heard about the urgent quest and come running. But what was the point of lining us up out here if there was an emergency?
Not only that, but it looked like some Guild staff members and people I assumed were local functionaries were busy building some kind of barricade around the adventurers…
Hang on a sec.
It almost seemed like they were trying to cut off our escape route so we couldn’t get away. There was some murmuring among the adventurers. None of us had a good feeling about this.
…What’s going on here?
“Hey, something’s not right. My sixth sense is telling me it’s time to run. I think we’d better get outta here while we still can.”
“You’re a sharp one, Kazuma. I’ve got a bad feeling about this, too. Maybe it’s a goddess’s intuition.” Hearing Aqua’s opinion wasn’t reassuring.
Someone came up to us. It was Darkness, who had vanished early in the morning with Sylphina. She crossed her arms and said, “Don’t worry, you two. Nothing criminal is happening, and nobody’s going to do anything awful to any of you. Just calm down.”
Okay, did that mean…?
“Do you know something about this urgent quest?” She might have had her arms crossed, but otherwise all that was protecting her was a black shirt and a tight skirt. Civilian clothes. This when everyone else here was armored to the hilt.
Darkness didn’t answer me. Instead, an anxious whisper started to spread through the crowd, alongside a looming disquiet. Us adventurers, though…we knew. We knew the Adventurers Guild was a national organization created for our benefit. It existed solely to support us. We did the jobs the Guild gave us and did them well, and in return, they helped us when we were in trouble. It was a cooperative relationship, not an adversarial one—it couldn’t be. They had no reason to be hostile toward us, and we had no reason to mistrust them.
That was the claim of the whispers, which gradually helped ease the tension. Until the woman standing before us in front of the Guild said, “Everyone, we have something urgent to ask of you. An emergency quest, if you will. Today marks exactly one month from the end of the fiscal year. You know what that means… Taxes are due today.
“Now, some members of this Guild have yet to pay the taxes they owe.”
I saw a few adventurers make troubled faces. “Wh-what the hell is this? Tell me what the hell this is! Hey, Aqua, what the—?”
“C-c-c-c-calm down, Kazuma! Just try to stay calm! We have to keep our heads! Look, that lady’s going to say something!”
The wall of Guild staff members and local officials closed in around a few adventurers who tried to flee at the announcement. Others raged or simply wept. Reactions varied, but there was one thing everyone there did: wail like they were at a funeral.
Some bureaucratic type at a safe distance announced, “Ahem, we have not, of course, er, asked this of you in the past. Naturally. Adventurers tend to be, ahem, very poor. So to date, we’ve practiced…not precisely tax forgiveness, ahem, but a certain compassion and have overlooked your tax burdens.” Even he didn’t sound very interested in what he was saying. “The Adventurers Guild is, of course, supported by taxes paid by all the townspeople, as are the rewards disbursed thereby. Despite the service it renders in eliminating monsters, in principle, the Guild is not subject to any special treatment, but compassion for your plight has previously moved us to forgive your collective tax burden. However, it is our, ahem, understanding that the members of the Guild have experienced a collective windfall this fiscal year… Some major bounties have been collected, I gather… To date, we’ve compassionately overlooked your tax burdens, so we certainly hope—nay, expect—that at least now that your purses are full, you’ll see your way to doing your civic duty.”
At that, the adventurers trying to run or resist simply fell silent. And I didn’t blame them: This was the first I was hearing of any of this. Right up until now, merely being an adventurer had always meant that things like taxes simply didn’t apply to you. Surely we could afford to pay the town back now that we had some cash in our pockets. I mean, we lived here, didn’t we? We owed this town as much as anyone.
Somewhere in the crowd, someone asked, “So how much do we owe in taxes anyway?”
The bureaucrat replied:
“Those who have made ten million eris or more will be taxed at a rate of one half their earnings to the fiscal year to date…”
The adventurers scattered in every direction.
4
“Aqua, what do we do?! Half our stuff? These people are nuts! They’re gonna take hundreds of millions off me!” I cried.
“I don’t have any money! I already spent it all! They can’t force you into bankruptcy to pay taxes! I swear I’m not going into debt again—no way! Let’s run, Kazuma! Let’s run far away! The tax system in this world is simple: Every year at the harvest, the first month of autumn, you have to pay. Your taxes are calculated based on your income to that point each year, and you have to pay it by the end of the month!”
“Well, at least they kept things simple! Dammit, wait. Today is the last day of the month! So we run, and then what? What happens if we don’t pay by the end of the day?!”
“You’re exempt. If you don’t pay by the end of the day—the end of the tax office’s business hours, no less—you’re exempt from payment for the year!”
Wow, simple and generous, too.
“Wait, how’s that work? Do people ever pay taxes under this system?”
“Don’t be dumb!” Aqua snapped. “The nobles make the laws in this world, remember? So of course they would set things up to work best for them! For commoners with minimal incomes, it’s more expensive to get out of town than to pay their taxes, so they always pay. But the rich people and the nobility take their autumn vacations right around now every year. After the end of the month, they come back.”
Geez, that was underhanded. I mean, even a cultured nation like Japan has corruption and tax evasion and stuff, but the nobles in this world really knew how to raise the bar…!
“What a bunch of pigs! This sucks! Well, I can play that game, too!”
“H-hold on…! Not all nobles are nasty; some of us are good…!” Darkness said pleadingly. Hey, wasn’t she going to run? I was about to ask why she was still here when she would surely have a huge tax burden when I noticed something in her hand.
The adventurers all knew it would be that much worse for them if they injured anyone while resisting, so instead of fighting, they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It really bugged me to see what Darkness was holding.
“Whatcha got there?”
“Oh, this? They work like this,” she said and then clapped one of the steel circles, connected by a chain, she was holding over her own right wrist. They were what we would’ve called handcuffs in Japan. Frankly, I was surprised I was seeing them only now, knowing what a perv she was.
“What exactly are you doing?” I asked, annoyed, but Darkness summarily ignored me.
Whatever, I didn’t have time to be dealing with Darkness’s fetishes today. If I understood correctly, if I could lie low through the end of the day, I would be legally tax-free. I was just about to suggest to Aqua and Megumin that we get out of there when…
“Yes, Miss Megumin, right? Hmm, let’s see here… Your income this year was negligible, so you’re exempt. Thank you for your cooperation!”
…Megumin was already done with the whole thing.
When she noticed me looking at her, the (literally) poor girl gave me a big smile. Grrr! That left Aqua, Darkness, and me…
Ka-click.
………
“Now what are you doing?” I said to Darkness. The freak must have finally cracked, because all of a sudden I discovered the companion to the cuff on her right wrist was snapped around my left. I didn’t have time for this idiocy; this was an emergency. I swear, this muscle-brain could be worse than Aqua sometimes.
Darkness gave me a friendly smile and, just as casually as if she was suggesting we go for a walk, said, “It’s a citizen’s duty to pay his taxes. So pay up. You’re the adventurer with the biggest income in the whole town.”
Oh yeah. She was on their side, wasn’t she?! Dammit!
“H-hey, lemme go! Dammit…! You guys!”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha, surely you can treat your friends better than that, Kazuma! C’mon, Aqua—you too!”
The air in front of the Guild Hall was thick with cries of protest. I saw other adventurers being led away as Darkness reached out and grabbed Aqua’s arm.
“Noooooooo! Darkness, please look the other way! Kazuma! Kazuma, please! Do something—I’m begging you!” She slapped at Darkness’s hand, but the Crusader showed no sign of letting go.
“Gimme some buffs!” I shouted at Aqua. “Muscle power, speed—boost everything! Then maybe I can drag us outta here! Darkness, cuffs, and all! We should be able to handle her between the two of us!”
“Hrm…” At that, Darkness simply let Aqua go. “…Aqua, I’m willing to ignore what you owe. Get going. Tax collectors are already prowling the streets around here, but if you can avoid them, you’re welcome to do whatever seems best to you… But in exchange for my clemency, I want you not to buff this man.”
“Aw, you dirty, rotten—! Hey, Aqua, she’s trying to divide and conquer! Don’t listen to her! Hit me with that magic!”
“………”
Aqua backed away silently. And then…
* * *
“I…I’m sorry, Kazuma. If I can leave even one person slower than me to keep them busy, my chances of escape are better… And besides, if you run away, then they’ll turn to the second-most-in-debt adventurer in Axel…and I think that’s me. Which would mean even more tax collectors chasing me…”
Seriously, why was it always moments like this when she suddenly developed a brain?
“All right, Aqua, how about this: If you give me that support magic, I’ll teach you a way that’s guaranteed to get you, at least, out of here safely. How about that?”
“…Do you really expect me to believe the guy who was ready to drop us all like hot potatoes and live in the royal castle just a few days ago?”
Dammit… When she’s right, she’s right.
“O-okay, I’ll tell you what to do first. If it sounds good to you, give me the strength buff or the speed buff, doesn’t matter which. Your choice!”
“Urgh… All right. What do I do?” Aqua leaned toward me so I could whisper in her ear. And then…
“Kazuma! If we both get out of this alive, let’s meet up back at the mansion! I’ll give you both buffs!” And she promptly put a couple of spells on me. Then she cast a couple on herself before weaving among the last of the struggling adventurers and making her way out into town.
“I don’t know what you told her, but she sure seemed to think it would work,” said Darkness, who, for some reason, had let the entire conversation go on uninterrupted. I had to wonder why she seemed to think none of this was a big deal.
“You’re awfully relaxed about this. With that strength buff on me, you won’t beat me through sheer strength. Now I can KO you with Drain Touch and haul you around like luggage.”
Darkness wasn’t impressed. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said, an incongruous smile on her face, and then she lifted her arms as if to say, Pick me up if you can.
I was about to do just that, but…
“U-um, Darkness, l-look at all these people… I’m a little nervous, grabbing you like this…”
“H-hey, you’re not the only one…!”
Nonetheless, I managed to get my arms around her, but…
“You won’t budge an inch!”
Darkness, practically triumphant, said, “Heh! I’ll have you know this plan has been in the works for a long time. The operation was supposed to take place at the beginning of the month, but then we were out of town so often. Right when I thought things were settling down, you said you wouldn’t come home. I was at the end of my rope.”
Geez, I guess I underestimated her. I always thought she was nothing more than a soft daughter of the nobility, but it turned out she could be steely when she wanted to.
“But here we are. We made it work on the very last day…! I knew from the start that you would try to run. And it’s my job to keep our most lucrative taxpayer from escaping. I’m talking about you, of course. To prevent you from getting away… Yes, for this very day, I’ve…!”
“‘For this very day’…! Y-you deliberately put on weight just for this?! After all that fretting about your abs, you went and gained—waaargh?!”
Darkness smacked me before I could finish. “They’re weights! Have a look at this! I’ve put lots of weights under my clothes! Look! Look!!” She rolled up her shirt to reveal an extensive collection of small chunks of what resembled steel… Geez—! Had she walked all the way here like that?
Either way, this was bad! Really bad!
“D-dammit! Hey, receptionist, I thought you were supposed to be on our side!”
“I’m sorry; I’m a public servant myself! They said I had to do this, or I wouldn’t get my summer bonus! I’m really sorry!”
I could see other adventurers I knew being arrested. There were chairs lined up in front of the Guild, and people who had finished paying their taxes were slumped in them, exhausted and defeated. Megumin, meanwhile, was relaxing, sipping some tea one of the staff members had brought her.
“Grrr, why go to all this trouble anyway? All you need to do is hunt the fat cats and take stuff from them!” someone said.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t do that. Too many people deliberately booby-trap their houses with potions that explode when you touch them, left in a location where the tax collectors would be sure to stumble over them, after which they sue us, alleging that we damaged valuable assets…”
A few people went on arguing with the staff like that, but there were fewer and fewer of them. This was dangerous. I was at the back of the line, but they were going to get to me eventually…!
“…You look like you’re feeling completely invulnerable, Darkness. What kind of persuasion would work on you? I know you too well to think you’d let me off if I tried to bribe you.”
Darkness knitted her brow. “Don’t patronize me, Kazuma. The Dustiness family bows to no one and takes part in nothing underhanded. Come quietly, and—”
“Steal.”
I ignored her and used my ability to take away one of her weights. I tossed it to the side.
“…Hey, Kazuma. You do remember that your Steal ability has a high chance of taking someone’s underwear, yes? Do you really want to do that in front of all these people? Resistance is futile—just pay up.”
“Steal.”
Whoops, that’s a miss. I had Darkness’s black tights in my hand, fresh off her legs.
As I stuffed them in my pocket, Darkness hissed, “………………………A-are we really doing this?”
“Oh, we’re doing this. I’ll strip you until you’re as light as a feather and then carry you off.”
………
“Ah, you’re Kazuma Satou, our biggest debtor, right? Come right this—Huh?! He ran away! And with Lady Dustiness in tow?! She was supposed to be guarding him!”
I weaved through the crowd of officials, dragging Darkness all the while!
5
“Arrrgh, he got away… He completely had his way with me and ran off…! And here I had sworn to pry taxes out of this man, even if it cost me my life…!”
Darkness was stripping the weights from her body, looking like she might cry, as we stood beside the street I had run down. Admittedly, I was impressed that she had been able to run with all that extra weight, but…
“C’mon! Quit whining and let’s go. How stupid are you, throwing the key to the handcuffs away in the mansion’s front yard before you came to town? I’m heading straight for the outskirts.”
“I know about your incredibly high Luck. I was afraid that if I had the key on me, you’d Steal it in one go and escape. Anyway, they’ll be watching the gate now. You should give up. You were much more of a man when you were mired in debt than you are now that you’re rolling in cash.”
“Shut up! I didn’t ask for your opinion!”
I was sneaking down the road, still attached to Darkness by the chain between us. It was hard to be inconspicuous like this, though. At the very least, we had to stay off the main streets. Thanks to the whole urgent-quest pretext, most of the adventurers had come dressed in full battle gear. Anyone would know at a glance who and what they were. Dammit, the Guild and those bureaucrats had really thought this one through. Ugh, why did I ever come back to this stupid town? Though to be fair, I’d actually been sent back…!
Don’t let your guard down, White Suit! I’m coming for you, Little Sister…! Wait for me!
Oh, how I wished to see Iris’s face. Why did I have to be stuck running around an ungrateful town like this, and chained to this woman, no less…?
Whatever, I had to take advantage of the empty streets to buy myself some time. I wondered if Aqua had escaped safely. Megumin sure had looked like she was enjoying herself. And this moron…!
“Hoo…” Darkness crouched down, too tired to move.
“Hey, you’re supposed to be the iron lady with a zillion times as much stamina as I have. Don’t tell me you’re already getting tired! Stand up!”
“‘Iron lady,’ right… Poor Lalatina, poor pampered noblewoman, she’s tired and she can’t walk anymorrrgh?!” I gave a violent pull on the chain, dragging Darkness to her feet before she could finish her mocking little pronouncement. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll stand. And I’ll run, too. So please give me another of those pulls… The way the cuff bites into my wrist is just so…”
“Y-you’re thinking about that now?” The sight of the red-faced, fidgety Darkness was almost enough to make me break down and pay my taxes then and there.
“I found him! He’s over there! Lady Dustiness is helping to slow him down! This is the Demon of Axel we’re dealing with! Call some backup! Do not let him escape!”
The voice was still distant, but that was already too close.
“Arrrgh, damn! Okay, here we go, Darkness! Don’t you dare slow me down! You try anything funny, and it’s Steal for you, you understand?!”
I truly believed I was threatening her.
“…K-Kazuma, when I think of you ripping everything off me out in public like this, I can’t help thinking maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all… Maybe I’m already a lost cause…”
“You’ve been a lost cause since the day I met you!”
The Guild people were gaining on us…!
It was around sunset, I figured. The government offices would have to be closing soon. And here I was, sitting on a cold rock. Across from me, studiously silent, was Darkness, seated on a chair with a nice, soft cushion.
“You’re such a cheater…,” she whispered.
Well, I could live with that.
“I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m glad you appreciate how smart I am.”
“You’re a cheater! A low-down dirty rat! Usually when you give up on everything else and run, you have something in mind…! Ugh, now every noble who hears about your little trick is going to do the same thing when they can’t run away!” Darkness exploded.
“Guess that’s just the way it works here… You’d better make some new laws or get some policemen who know how to play dirty. You figure it out.” I continued to hug my knees as I answered.
At the moment, Darkness and I were holed up in what seemed like the safest place in town. The place with the most authority: friend of the downtrodden, captor of criminals in the name of justice.
That’s right: We were at the police station.
“If there’s one thing that’s true in every country and every world, it’s that different branches of government never get along.”
“You cheater! You sneaky cheat! You’re the cheatingest cheat who ever cheated!”
I had dashed into the police station, the tax collectors hot on my tail, and used Steal on a lady officer standing there. I was promptly arrested on charges of theft and indecent behavior. (I won’t mention exactly what I stole.)
“Ugh, even in jail, you’re still stubborn… You know taxes pay the police’s salary, right? They were so happy to lend me those handcuffs! Why are they being so obstinate now…?! And you, you reported Aqua like you were the victim, and now you’re willing to commit a crime in order to get out of paying your taxes…!” I mostly ignored her bitter mumbling.
“Boy, am I lucky you were attached to me. Thanks to you, I bet we’ll get out of here as soon as tonight.”
“There’s no way I can believe you!”
The tax collectors had objected in vain when the cops tossed me in jail after my arrest. They’d had a muted conference after that but apparently hadn’t been able to come to terms about handing me over. Maybe thanks to Darkness, or maybe just because this was my first time, the police had said they would release me after the interrogation. Well, it was after the interrogation, and now we were waiting for them to finish the paperwork. I would be home before the night was out.
Thanks to the fact that we were cuffed together, Darkness was stuck with me, but because she wasn’t a criminal, they gave her a nice chair to sit on while she was in the cell with me. When the sun was well and truly set, Darkness and I heard a voice.
“All right, get out of here. You’re free to go. There’s even someone waiting for you. Sorry about all this, Lady Dustiness… This way, please.”
6
“We’re home… Huh, didn’t Aqua manage to run away?” I asked as Darkness and I came through the door of the mansion to discover Aqua sobbing on the couch while Megumin tried to comfort her. And after I had specifically told her a special way to escape that only she could possibly use.
“Ah, welcome home, Kazuma. Well, it seems she very nearly made it to the deadline, but…” Megumin, giving Aqua reassuring pats on the head, was obviously troubled.
Between sniffles, Aqua managed, “Wa… Waaah…! Just like you said, Kazuma, I tried to make for the water purification place…! But before I gob dere, dey founb me…! And the only choice I hab was to hide in dis tiny irrigation pond…! Anb den…!”
My idea had been for her to sink herself down in the huge retention pond at the town’s water processing facility and stay there until the night was out. As the goddess of water, she could breathe as comfortably down there as she could up here. And I figured nobody would go dredging the retention pond…
“I gather that once she was in that pond, some of the officials started using fire magic on it in an effort to boil her,” Megumin said. “Happily, it seems the deadline passed before they managed it, and they had to give up. But it was a rather traumatic experience, and Aqua hasn’t stopped crying…”
Wow, the bureaucrats around here sure were ruthless. I’d been sure it was a great plan, but maybe it had been a mistake on my part.
“Oh…? Have you still not managed to free yourselves from those handcuffs?” Megumin asked, looking at Darkness and me. Ah yes, the handcuffs the police had so generously lent Darkness. I had assumed being thrown in jail was the perfect solution, because they could set us loose on our way home.
“But I guess every pair of cuffs has a different key, so no one can steal one key and go around releasing criminals,” Darkness mumbled. “And the key to these cuffs in particular…”
I picked up where she trailed off. “This idiot was afraid I would Steal the key from her, so she threw it away. Just flung it somewhere on our property. No idea where, but it’s getting late and I can’t see in the dark well enough to find one tiny key, even with my boosted abilities. I’m gonna make her look for it tomorrow morning.” I gave Darkness a jab with my elbow; at least she had the decency to appear remorseful. I wanted her to understand that she’d done something stupid.
“…Oh-ho, so what you’re saying is that for tonight, the two of you will bathe together, use the toilet together, and even sleep together. What good friends you are.”
Megumin, that’s not…
That’s…not…
………
““………””
Darkness and I looked at each other. Neither of us said a word.
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