Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? (LN) - Volume 16 - Chapter 10

Asaka

“There, there.”

I gently stroke Kunihiko’s head after he’s cried himself to sleep.

The childlike act of crying until you’re so exhausted you fall asleep strikes me as funny somehow, and a soft chuckle escapes my lips.

Despite his self-deprecating jokes about his “quest for vengeance” and “playing the tragic hero” being over now, I’ve seen firsthand how hard Kunihiko was fighting all this time.

The way he pushed himself to his limits as if he was running out of time was such a far cry from his previous life as an ordinary high school student that it never ceased to amaze me.

I could never do that sort of thing.

I hate hard work. I don’t like doing my best.

Everything in moderation, I say.

I usually go through life preserving my energy, and occasionally try a little harder only when it’s really necessary.

That level of effort feels just right for me.

I’m not the kind of person who works myself to the bone or puts my life on the line.

I just don’t have that kind of zeal.

But if anything, that’s what makes me respect people who can do such things.

Since I can’t do it myself, I’m always impressed with people who give it their all and really try their hardest.

…Even if I don’t understand them.

Kunihiko lives his life with fiery passion.

So much so that I worry he’ll burn himself up, body and soul.

If it were anyone but Kunihiko, I would’ve stopped trying to keep up with him long ago.

I nearly told him “Let’s just give up already” more times than I can count.

But I never brought myself to say it, because I wanted to let him do as he pleased.

I liked watching him recklessly charge on ahead.

And having his back was a lot easier than you might imagine.

It certainly required a lot of the hard work and extra effort that I hate so much.

But being by Kunihiko’s side feels so right that I couldn’t imagine going anywhere else.

Kunihiko always tries to run full speed ahead, while I prefer to walk at a leisurely pace.

You wouldn’t think we’d ever be able to keep the same pace, yet somehow, we’ve managed to stay joined at this hip all this time.

Honestly, I think it’s nothing short of a miracle.

If we’d taken one wrong step, we could’ve easily wound up lost beyond all hope of repair.

I might have fallen behind, or Kunihiko might have gotten seriously injured or worse…

We always made it through with help from the advantage of being reincarnations.

But there’s no guarantee it’ll always be this way.

There’s a limit, I know.

I saw it up close when we fought Merazophis in the war against the demons.

Kunihiko and I couldn’t even take him as a team; even with Ms. Oka’s help and support from a long-distance sniper, we were just barely able to make an even match.

Merazophis was able to fend off all four of us all by himself, and managed to withdraw with barely a scratch, too.

We couldn’t win.

If we ever fought Merazophis again, Kunihiko and I would likely both be killed.

After our conversation with him in the elf village, that suspicion turned to certainty.

He was connected to Wakaba’s group, and was deliberately not killing us because we’re reincarnations.

That means he was actually holding back when we fought, and we still couldn’t come close to beating him.

He’s too strong.

I do think that Kunihiko and I can still grow stronger, too.

But we wouldn’t be able to fight Merazophis if we fought him now, and even if we took the time to train more, there’s no guarantee we’d catch up.

It’s not like we have any convenient way of getting stronger all at once, either.

Nor do we have enough time to find one.

Everything is happening so fast, and there’s nothing we can do.

In the end, I’m just an ordinary person with no motivation.

I can’t fight the flow of such enormous events, nor do I have the energy to try.

I don’t even want to have anything to do with it.

Ideally, I’d rather just watch from someplace safe.

In fact, I would much prefer that outrageous events, like a battle for the fate of the world, would take place where I don’t even have to know about them.

I want to run away.

Kunihiko, on the other hand, stayed firmly in place and thought about what to do.

He got so deep in thought that there was a big crease between his eyebrows, which is very unlike him—he never thinks for long about anything.

And his conclusion was that he would fight for the ebony god’s side.

This would mean fighting against the ivory god’s side, which also meant fighting Merazophis once again.

I’ve always let Kunihiko do exactly what he wanted.

I thought supporting him in that way was my role.

So this time, it was my turn to worry about what to do.

Should I let Kunihiko have his way, and see the fight through even if it meant death?

Or should I stop him by force?

It was a difficult decision.

I had to chose between protecting Kunihiko’s pride, or his life.

Thus, I hesitated until the very last minute, and basically decided on the spot.

When we saw Merazophis, I immediately thought: Ah, we’re going to die.

And then I acted almost entirely on reflex.

I knocked out Kunihiko, picked him up, and ran for it.

Fortunately, Merazophis didn’t chase after us.

I suppose he had no reason to.

Merazophis might be a bitter enemy from Kunihiko’s and my perspective, but far from hating us, he even seemed to feel sympathy for us.

In the end, Kunihiko’s passion for vengeance was entirely one-sided.

He realized as much himself in the elf village, and that seemed to take the wind out of his sails entirely.

Even so, the fact that he chose to fight after a rare period of thinking hard about it must mean that he had strong feelings on the matter.

And I completely disregarded those feelings.

This might be the end, I thought.

I’d always believed that there was virtually nothing that could tear the two of us apart.

But this instance might be extreme enough to qualify.

After all, I just destroyed his big, once-in-a-lifetime moment.

I was sure he’d be furious when he woke up.

It might even ruin our relationship beyond recovery.

But even then, as awful as that would be, I wanted Kunihiko to live, no matter what.

And as it turns out, my fears of splitting up were entirely unfounded.

Far from getting angry at me, he actually apologized.

While a part of me felt that I was the one who ought to be sorry, I was also thrilled and relieved that even this couldn’t destroy the bond between us.

After Merazophis killed the rest of our clan, when we barely escaped and reached a town…it was Kunihiko who held my hand and led me forward.

Kunihiko who was by my side.

So I resolved to stay by his side forever.

As long as he didn’t shake me off himself, that is.

I’m not sure what the future holds for us—even less sure than when our home was destroyed and we were left with nowhere to go and no idea why it had happened.

Maybe we’ll actually get to live the normal life I want, or maybe it’ll be the action-packed life of Kunihiko’s dreams.

Maybe we won’t have a future at all, and our lives will soon be at an end.

But that’s all the more reason for me to stay by Kunihiko’s side.

Until death do us part.