Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 14 - Chapter 4

4. The Way Things Shone When we First Met [toki_meki]

“...Destiny,” Tonbe said. “Yes, that’s it, I think it was destiny, my meeting with Io-sama. That’s the only thing it could be called, but I wouldn’t say Io-sama and I are bound by destiny, because if I said that, Io-sama would scold me. ‘Hold on, Tonbe, you’re creeping me out. Could you stop? Seriously, it’s gross. Here, look, I’ve got goosebumps.’ And when she showed me her upper arm—no, not her upper arm, she wouldn’t show me her upper arm, would she? Well, her forearm with goosebumps—I’d stare so hard, I would, of course I would, right? I’d look at it like crazy, right? I mean, it’s Io-sama’s forearm, after all! Even if that would just creep Io-sama out even more. I know it would, but I’d still look. Yeah, I’d look. Like, I could do it so many times, just to see Io-sama’s goosebumps. I’m thinking ten, maybe? Like, I’m talking about getting off here. Gwuhuhuhuhuhyuh! Oh, this is a secret, by the way. Seriously, if you don’t keep it a secret, things’ll get out of hand. I’m counting on you. But, well, anyway, I’m glad I was able to meet Io-sama, you know. Like, that alone was enough to have made it worth being born. In the beginning, in Sherry’s Tavern, right? You look like a volunteer soldier, so you must know Sherry’s Tavern. So, I was there, right? And I heard a priest was recruiting party members. Now, I was in another party at the time, but they were all total shit. The kings of shit. The shit kings. Gwuhuhuhuhuhyuh! They’d call me fat, and ugly, and gross, and creepy, and smelly, all sorts of things. Now, maybe some of it wasn’t entirely untrue, but still, how could they say that to my face? I mean, sure, they acted like it was all a friendly joke, but anyway, it was horrible. So, when I snapped, they were like, ‘What’re you getting so red in the face for, man? We were just having fun with you. You’re so funny.’ Those times, I’d think I’d maaaaybe been a bit immature about it, and I’d back down, but when it happened over, and over, and over, and over a million, billion times, repeatedly, in the end, I started to think, You guys are playing me for a fool. You’re not having fun with me. You’re mocking and laughing at me. I’m hurt here. I might’ve put on a stupid grin, but I was on Heartbreak Alley when I entered that tavern. What’s Heartbreak Alley? Whatever! I may be 171 centimeters tall and weigh 81 kilos, but I’m not over a hundred, okay? Don’t call anyone under a hundred kilos fat. It’s an affront to the concept of fatness. You agree, right? Right? Well?”

“Oh... uhhh...” Kuzaku said. “I guess, yeah...”

I don’t know whether to agree or not, he thought. I mean, I’m not even sure what he wants me to agree with.

I don’t even know anymore. I mean, this guy, he’s been muttering to himself quietly beside me this whole time. It doesn’t seem like he’s gonna stop, either. He’s been chattering nonstop the whole time we’ve been walking. I can only listen to so much. It’s like, I try to listen, but I don’t hear the words. This fat ass, he’s so damn annoying...

“For a start, there was Sakumata, that guy who was what you’d call the leader of the party that claimed they were ‘having fun’ with me,” Tonbe went on. “I wonder if he’s still around. Is he still alive? Well, he was around back then. That guy was going out with the party mage, but they broke up, then he went out with the party thief. I mean, at a glance, maybe he was hot? Like, he figured he was pretty hot stuff, too. The fact was, he’d openly say stuff like, ‘I’ve never been hard up for women.’ Man, your face is nothing special. You’ve got a face like a smashed banana. Long face, a snub nose, thin lips, droopy eyes. He might’ve been one of the less ugly members of that party, but that’s the low bar to end all low bars. By the way, your girlfriends, the mage and the thief, I hate to be the one to say this, but they were middle of the pack, at best. Maybe worse. My face may not be the most symmetrical, and if you were a pretty boy, you might be in a position to call me ugly, but I don’t want to hear it from you. You’ve got no right to say it.”

“Uhh... Yeah, sure...”

“So, basically, I was thinking, I want out of Sakumata’s party. Maybe I should quit. What should I do? Then’s when, hot damn, a goddess came down to me. That’s right! She was a literal goddess. When I went to see the priest recruiting party members, get this. There was a goddess there. A goddess who’d come down to earth from heaven. Like a lightning bolt. I was shocked silly. Gwuhuhuhuhuhyuh!”

“Oh, uhh...”

I don’t care, but can you do something about that laugh? Kuzaku thought vaguely. I mean, I’ve had enough. I’m seriously starting to get fed up with this.

“Uh... sorry, Tonbe-san.” Kuzaku tried to interrupt as politely as he could, but Tonbe the fat paladin didn’t care one bit.

“I don’t know what it was. She had silky smooth hair, and a petite figure, but she was, like, really, really, small, but not in a delicate way, you know? She had a feminine figure, you could say? The priest’s uniform is white, after all, and that whiteness, it reaaaally suited her. Like, her skin, it seemed so smooth, and they sparkled, her eyes, I mean, because they were so big, and more importantly, this goddess was already surrounded by volunteer soldiers, but the moment her eyes met mine, she smiled for me. A grin. My heart felt like it was going to stop, you know? No, that’s no lie. I’m not exaggerating. My heart literally came to a complete stop for a moment there, okay?”

Why couldn’t this guy have died then? Kuzaku grumbled silently. If he had, I wouldn’t have to listen to this bullshit, nonsense story, now would I?

No, I take that back. It’s not good to think like that. Sorry, sorry. No matter how awful he is, I shouldn’t be wishing him dead. He saved me, after all. This fatso. Guess I shouldn’t call him that, either. Well, he is fat, though. I don’t think being fat’s that bad, but there are different kinds of fat. His kind sort of pisses me off. No? Am I just pissed because he’s Tonbe? Hmm. Could be. But I’m tired, and sleepy. Still, it’s a wonder I’m still going. It’s less that I’m walking and more that I’m falling forward, and then my leg moves up on its own, and then I fall again, and then my other leg moves up. That same thing, over and over. Also, it’s weirdly sweet...

“This goes without saying, but I decided immediately,” Tonbe went on. “I went right back to that stupid, idiotic, smashed-banana-face Sakumata, and told him, ‘Goodbye, we’ll never meet again, forget I ever existed, yes, that means forever.’ Then, right away, I rushed to my goddess, worked up my courage, and nominated myself to be one of her comrades. I don’t remember what I said exactly. It was, I want to change my life, or something along those lines, I think. Oh, and I think I said something like, I’ll do anything, so please take me, too. I mean, obviously I’d do anything, right? This was Io-sama, a goddess, after all. I had to. Guhfuhfuhfuhfuhyuhohohyuhyuhohoh!”

I’m at my limit, Kuzaku moaned silently. I clearly can’t take any more, and I don’t care anymore. I’ll just collapse.

The moment he fell, there was an immediate kick.

“Ouch!”

Kuzaku rolled around with both hands holding his forehead.

Surprisingly, the one who kicked Kuzaku in the forehead with the toe of their foot was not Tonbe. “No sleeping, you dolt.”

Another person accompanying them, one who wasn’t fat like Tonbe, was looking down at Kuzaku.

“D-Don’t kick me,” Kuzaku muttered. “Ow...”

“Yeah, I’m gonna kick ya!” the guy said.

He was dressed all in black, a look that screamed he was a dread knight. His chin was awfully long. So long, in fact, that it stuck out from under his mask. His eyebrows were close to being triangles, he had sanpaku eyes with their whites showing, and an incredibly thin forehead.

There were limits to how thin a forehead could be. Kuzaku had never seen a hairline that came this low before.

“If ya sleep, it’ll cause trouble,” the other guy said. “’Course I’m gonna hafta kick ya. If yer gonna sleep, then die. If ya can’t die on yer own, I’ll murder ya myself.”

“Gomi,” said a voice.

It was a voice as clear as a glass bell. That beautiful voice was... calling someone “gomi,” a word that meant “trash”?

When Kuzaku looked, a long-haired beauty in a white robe was looking in his direction.

Though he called her a beauty, there was a mask on her face, covering the bottom half of it. Even so, she was ridiculously beautiful. He felt like Tonbe had called her petite, but she was of average height, neither tall nor short. Her proportions left nothing to complain about.

She was like, well, an orthodox pretty girl. The pretty girl. It was like, when someone said the words “pretty girl,” she was the kind they meant. There was a translucence to her, a cleanliness? So pretty that the word “pretty” itself seemed stale. Like, “right there is a pretty girl.”

Pretty girls were not a fiction. They truly did exist.

The pretty girl’s outfit wasn’t all white. There were blue highlights. Though it had been tailored to be cuter, it was what you’d recognize as a priest’s outfit. It suited her insanely well. It was like it was a one-of-a-kind outfit, custom ordered for a pretty girl.

That pretty girl, with a voice that fit a pretty girl, had said just one word: gomi, which meant trash or garbage.

It hit him with destructive force.

“Leave it at that, Gomi.”

She’d said it again! The pretty girl, saying “gomi.”

The dread knight who had been called trash bent over 90 degrees—no, 120 degrees—no, no, close to 180 degrees.

“Y-Yes’m! If ya say to do it, Io-sama, I’ll do it gladly!”

“Your voice is too loud,” the pretty girl said. “Shut up, Gomi.”

Having been insulted by the pretty girl, Gomi performed an avant garde bow that placed his face so low that it nearly touched his knees, and in a voice as quiet as the whine of a mosquito, he apologized. “S-Sorry...”

His entire body was trembling. Maybe he was crying. Actually, the tears were overflowing, so there was no maybe about it; this grown man was plainly crying.

Man, you’re over thirty, Kuzaku thought. Don’t cry...

Incidentally, Tonbe was now looking at Gomi and grinning. Well, wasn’t he a nasty piece of work?

“Well...” Kuzaku sat up, twisted his head left and right, and spinning his arms in circles. For a moment, he felt like his sleepiness vanished, but he still didn’t feel right.

“It’s true I felt like I was going to fall asleep,” Kuzaku said. “Would that have been a bad thing?”

“Well, yes,” the pretty girl said. “In Parano, when you sleep, you dream. Those dreams warp to give birth to dream monsters.”

“Hmm...”

I don’t really get it, Kuzaku thought. Do I? But, seriously. Ah... I’m tired...

He tried to yawn, but his mouth was covered. With a hand.

Whose hand?

“The wind is blowing, you know,” the pretty girl said. “The sweet wind of Parano. Don’t carelessly breathe it in.”

The pretty girl was looking up at Kuzaku. She was damn close. When did that happen? He’d felt sleepy again, and maybe he’d started to drift off. But wait, it felt like the pretty girl was covering his mouth. No, it didn’t just feel that way; she absolutely was.

“I-Io-sama!” Tonbe shrieked.

“Io-sama!” Gomi wailed.

Fatso and Trash—no, Tonbe and Gomi—were panicking. In fact, they were enraged. Why were they so mad?

“Erm... wind...?” Kuzaku asked.

“Ah!” The pretty girl’s body shuddered, and she let out a charming moan that made him jump a little.

Huh? What, what, what? What’d I do?

“What was that?” he yelped.

“It tickled!” The pretty girl withdrew the hand she had been using to cover Kuzaku’s mouth, holding it under her left arm as she turned away from him. “...Geez.”

She shot Kuzaku a sidelong glance. He saw what she was doing here.

It was so deliberate, he wanted to go, No way.

Even as he thought, Who does that? Kuzaku’s heart started to race. If he had to say whether she was cute or not, she really was cute. Pretty girls were a thing to be feared.

“How! Dare! Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...!” Tonbe screamed.

“Th-Th-This! This is! This is! This is unforgivable...!”

Tonbe and Gomi had totally snapped. Their faces were beet red, and they looked ready to lunge at Kuzaku at any moment.

Tonbe had his war hammer ready, and Gomi was going for the greatsword slung across his back. Were they ready to kill...?

The pretty girl’s hand had touched Kuzaku. That might be what had sent the two of them into a rage. Not that he didn’t understand why. They probably liked her. They were in love. They called her Io-sama, after all. They loved her too much, maybe to the point it was something close to worship.

However, their Io-sama didn’t see them as objects of romantic interest in the slightest. She used them as lackeys.

It’s so warped, Kuzaku thought. That’s seriously gross.

“Uh... Hey... Er...”

That said, they had saved him, and they were his seniors when it came to being volunteer soldiers, and he might have other ties to them, too.

Kuzaku didn’t want to cause trouble, so though he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong here, he opted to bow his head in apology.

“If I did something to offend you, I’m sorry.”

“Y-Y-You think a-a-a-apologizing’s going to get you out of this?!” Tonbe shouted.

“Man, you’re stuttering like crazy, Tonbe-san...” Kuzaku said.

“Don’t poke fun at me! You cheeky brat! I’ve been doing this longer than you!”

“Sorry, couldn’t help myself...”

“Io-sama!” Gomi shouted as he finally drew his sword. He was crying for some reason, too. “I’m beggin’ ya, gimme permission to cut this rotten beanpole who looks like he thinks he’s hot!”

“I look like I think I’m a pretty boy?” Kuzaku asked skeptically. “Reading into things a bit much aren’t you? I mean, I don’t even think I’m hot.”

“Where’d ya get that smug, self-assured attitude?!” Gomi shouted. “Ya say yer not hot, but ya probably’re thinkin’ yer pretty hot! Yer type really makes me sick!”

“No, I seriously don’t think I am.”

“Acting casual with me?! I’m yer senior! You can’t even address me with the proper respect?! You die!”

“Gomi!” Io shouted.

If she hadn’t, Gomi would absolutely have attacked Kuzaku. Then Kuzaku would have been cut down with a single stroke. Probably—no, almost certainly—he would have been cut down.

Every hair on his body stood on end.

Damn, that was scary, he thought.

The seething look Gomi had shot him. He’d been on the verge of stepping in, with a sharpness in his movements like a spring wound back all the way. On top of that, Gomi was a dread knight. For a dread knight, high mobility, movements that made their opponent hallucinate, and swordsmanship were their specialties. Kuzaku would likely have taken Gomi’s first attack, with no chance to resist.

The man wasn’t average. It was clear Gomi was a highly skilled, high level dread knight. In addition, he might have had the magic it seemed anyone in Parano could use affecting him, too. Whatever the case, his abilities were a level, maybe two or three levels, above Kuzaku’s.

Despite that, in Io’s hands, he was no more than trash. He wasn’t a likable guy, but Kuzaku had to feel a little sorry for him.

“That’s enough, Gomi,” Io said coldly. “He’s already my lackey. Do you seriously believe you have any right to punish him?”

“I do not,” Gomi mumbled. “I couldn’t possibly. I-I’m terribly sorry, Io-sama...”

“Do you truly understand? You, Gomi? You’re trash that’s unfit to live, and you claim you can hear what I say and understand it?”

“I can’t! I can’t, but let me try! I’m filthy trash, but let me be trash yer willin’ to call trash, Io-sama!”

Wow. He was bawling. Gomi was whining and crying and begging Io for forgiveness. How could he lower himself like that? Kuzaku didn’t understand at all. It was a mystery why Tonbe was looking at Io and Gomi and groaning through gritted teeth, too. What kind of relationship did they have? Kuzaku didn’t want to guess, and he wished they’d leave him out of it, but that aside...

“I’m your lackey, too... Is that it?” Kuzaku asked.

“Well, yeah?” Io said, with an implied, What of it?

No, no, no, Kuzaku thought. “Huh? Since... when?”

“Since you were born, right?”

When she responded as if it was a given, he even started to feel like maybe she was right.

No.

Like hell she was.

“I don’t even remember being born,” Kuzaku said. “I mean, I don’t even have memories from before I came to Grimgar. We just met, too.”

“You’re in the Day Breakers, right?” Io asked.

“Well... technically? It’s never felt like it, though. Soma-san, Akira-san, and even Rock-san, they all feel like they are way above us, out of our reach.”

“I am most definitely far out of your reach, too, but I fortunately happen to also be a member of the Day Breakers, and we have met here in this alternate world, this other world, called Parano. You mean to call that a coincidence?”

“Nah... uh... I dunno,” Kuzaku said. “I do think it’s lucky.”

“You’re silly. This was inevitable, you know? You met me because you were meant to.”

“You... really think so?”

“Yes, that’s right. In order to be my lackey.”

“Your lackey...”

“I will allow you to serve me. This goes without saying, but you couldn’t be luckier. Tremble with joy.”

“That’s right!” Tonbe stomped his feet, spewing spittle as he shouted.

Gross... Kuzaku thought.

“I’m not happy to see the number of lackeys go up, but Io-sama says so, then so be it!” Tonbe shouted. “Be happy! It’s an honor, so serve Io-sama with glee! Praise be to Io-sama!”

“I don’t wanna accept ya! But I ain’t got no choice! It’s the will of Io-sama!” Gomi was crying again. How could he cry so easily? Had his tear ducts loosened up from old age?

“We’re going.” Io brushed back her long hair, and began to walk before stopping. She laid her gaze on Kuzaku.

When she stared at him like that, he was struck by a sensation that felt like she’d grabbed his heart. He couldn’t move a muscle. He kind of wished that when she took off her mask, her looks would turn out to be nothing special. If they weren’t, and she really was a flawless beauty, he might be in trouble.

“Bossari,” Io said in a mumble.

Kuzaku cocked his head to the side. “...?”

“It’s your name.”

“No, I’m Kuzaku...”

“From now on, you’re Bossari,” Io declared. “I decided it. Understood?”

He couldn’t possibly accept that word as his name; it meant “scruffy.” He was about to complain when Io lowered her mask to the bottom of her chin.

She was flawless.

There was an impeccable pretty girl right in front of him. Her lips in particularly were so puffy and glossy, it made her worryingly special.

“Do you understand?” Io demanded.

I don’t—Wait, what were we talking about again? Guess it doesn’t matter. Not anymore. She’s too pretty. Kuzaku almost nodded despite himself. Huh?

Is that okay? It’s not, right? It’s not right, right?

But, wait, what’s not right again...?

“Nice to meet you, Bossari!” Tonbe cried. “That’s our Io-sama! Her naming sense is wonderful, Bossari!”

“Hey, Bossari! Good for you, Bossari! I’m lookin’ forward to workin’ with ya, Bossari!”

Tonbe and Gomi surrounded Kuzaku on both sides, putting their arms around his shoulders.

“No!” Kuzaku yelped. “Bossari is not okay! There’s no way it’s okay, right?!”

“Are you a moron?! Io-sama says you’re Bossari, so it’s already decided!”

“Yessiree! Ya look like a Bossari to me! Bossari’s the only name for ya!”

“Oh, right, Gomi, lend Bossari a spare mask,” Io ordered.

“Righto, Io-sama! C’mere, put this on, Bossari!”

“By the way, Bossari, I’m a natural insomniac, so I don’t need a mask! Yes, I’m an insomniac! Get it, Bossari?! Guhuhuhuhuhohyuh!”

“I don’t care if you’re an insomniac!” Kuzaku yelled. “Come on! Hearing you guys call me ‘Bossari, Bossari’ is pissing me off even more!”

“Is that right? That’s some cheek, getting pissed off at us, Bossari!”

“Yer just a Bossari, so don’t get uppity with us, Bossari!”

“Damn it! Okay fine, we’re going, but where?! You haven’t told me a thing...”

“To the Scarlet Forest.” Io put her hand on her hip, brushing her hair back again.

Did she like that gesture? She was nailing it. With her unearthly beauty, she was nailing it so hard, it was scary.

“I’ll introduce you to the king,” Io informed him. “If you want to survive here in Parano, I would advise you to be polite, and not do anything to offend him.”